Black Chinese (Afro-Asian): history and countries of origin

The Black or Afro-Asian Chinese Are people of interracial Asian and African origin. They are also individuals from African communities who have been living in the Indian subcontinent for several hundred years and have settled in countries like Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and India.

These communities are the Sheedis or Siddis, settled in Karnataka and Gujrat 400 years ago. The largest communities of Africans in India and Pakistan are the Siddis.

Jean Ping,, Ethiopia, Feb. 2, 2008.

The term also includes the ethnic group of the"negritos"like the Andamanese who are the Aboriginal inhabitants of South Asia and Southeast Asia. Also tribes such as the Daasanach have been found in Ethiopia, Kenya and Sudan that speak Cushitas dialects of Afro-Asian origin.

History

Ethiopians arrived in southern Arabia in the second century and the fourth century. In the year 532 D.C. Had invaded Yemen. After this, many more Africans came to South Arabia as slaves, men were usually sold, and women were kept as servants for Arab leaders.

Mixed-race children were more valuable in southern Arabia. Two of these children became princes of the Abbassides. At this time, the Arab army, known as the Sabaens, moved to Ethiopia. In Iraq, Bantu-speaking Africans were called Zanj.

The large number of trench slaves who work in poor conditions in Iraq leads to the famous Zanj rebellion for over fifteen years (869-883 AD). These African rebels took over many cities in Iraq forcing the Arabs to flee to African countries like Kenya, Somalia and Tanzania.

Today someone of African and Arab origin is considered Afro-Arab. But it was a former slave with the name of Najah who took power in the 10th century and established the Banu Najah dynasty, the first real Afro-Asian family.

Afro-Asiatics of Katanga

Katanga is a province located in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and is rich in minerals such as copper and cobalt. In the 1970s, several Japanese men lived in this region working in the mines, confined in a field exclusively for men.

These workers, who arrived without a family, began to interact with local women and thus fathered children with the Congolese natives. Many of these children who were born as a result of interracial relationships died shortly after birth.

A Japanese doctor at the local mining hospital apparently poisoned the infants since most of the Japanese miners had families and did not accept the children to remain alive with their mothers. Afro-Asian children who survived and who were interviewed do not have birth certificates.

This is because they were not given birth in hospitals but in scrubs given the fear of grandparents who feared they would end up dead like other children. It is believed that 50 children survived but there are no details on the number of children who died.

Equatorial Guinea

In the middle of the nineteenth century, about 500 Chinese workers and hired servants, along with a handful of Indians, were whisked away to the island of Fernando Po through the old Macao occupied by the Portuguese.

While most of these servants returned to their lands at the end of their servitude, a few remained, who settled and married people of the local population.

An example is the East Indian working immigrant, Francisco Kashu, who remained in Moka after the death of his last living relative. He married the daughter of one of the last Bubi kings, producing several Indo-Equatoguinean children.

The fleet of Zheng He

In 1999, Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times reported an amazing encounter on the island of Pate, where he found a village of stone huts. He spoke with an old man who lived in the village and said that he was a descendant of the Chinese explorers who had been shipwrecked there centuries before.

The Chinese had traded with the locals, and even had loaded giraffes on their ship to take China. However, the Chinese ran aground on a nearby reef. Kristof found evidence that confirmed the history of man. These descendants of the Zheng He fleet occupy the Pate and Lamu islands, including the Asian characteristics of the people of the village and Asian-looking porcelain artifacts.

South Asia

As early as AD 1100, African-speaking Bantu slaves from East Africa were brought to India by Arab traders. These Africans became known as Siddi or Habshi, the Arabic word for African black.

Today, marriage has made the Siddi population in India much smaller. Someone of Indian and African origin is considered an Indo-African. In South Asia there are over 15,000 people who identify themselves as Afro-Asian.

U.S

In 1882 the China Exclusion Act was passed and Chinese workers who decided to stay in the United States could no longer be with their wives who stayed in China. Because white Americans looked at Chinese workers as immigrants who stole US jobs, they were often ill-treated.

Many Chinese men settled in black communities and, in turn, married black women. Tiger Woods, the famous golfer, is of white, Chinese, Native American, Thai and black ancestry. His father was half African American and his mother was half Thai.

The R & B singer Amerie is another famous American Afro-Asian, her father is African American and her Korean mother. Hines Ward, an NFL football player, is also an Afro-Asian. He currently plays for the Pittsburgh Steelers. In the 2000 census, 106,782 people of Afro-Asian origin were counted in the United States.

West Indies

In the 1860s, many Asians from China came to the Antilles to work, mostly as traders. It was more common for a Chinese man to marry a black woman, since there were more black women than Chinese women.

According to the 1946 census, 12,394 Chinese were between Jamaica and Trinidad. 5,515 of those living in Jamaica were Chinese Jamaicans and another 3,673 were of Chinese-Trinitarian origin living in Trinidad. In Guyana and Haiti, there is also a very small percentage within the minority who are of Asian descent. The Haitian painter Edouard Wah was born of a Chinese father and a Haitian mother.

United Kingdom

The UK has a large mixed race population, which is about 1.4% of the population (about 850,000 people). The largest groups are blends between whites and blacks, and whites and Asians.

However, there are over 70,000 citizens of the United Kingdom who are mixed race and do not conform to the above descriptions, a large percentage of these are Afro-Asian. Famous British Afro-Asians include Naomi Campbell and David Jordan.

China

Today, Afro-Asian births are rebounding as a result of the arrival of African-American students in cities such as Nanjing, Hangzhou and Shanghai. Another factor that contributes to this recovery is the strengthening of trade relations between Africa and China, which has invited an influx of African immigrants to China, mainly Nigerians who have formed a small but progressive community in the country.

Officials estimated about 500 mixed marriages between Africans and Chinese. In places like Guangzhou, a progressive population of about 10,000 African entrepreneurs continues to thrive. Among China's most famous Afro-Asian natives are Shanghai-born Lou Jing and half-South African half-Ding Hui volleyball player, half Chinese.